Asset Management

State Street Corporation announced it will adopt Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, to deploy the Charles River Investment Management Solution. As part of the agreement, Charles River will also incorporate Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Teams into Charles River IMS.

Charles River’s cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) model helps investment firms simplify and improve operations, scale more readily, increase user satisfaction and better manage operational risk. By using Azure, Charles River will be able to rapidly deploy new products and services, more easily increase data and computing capacity, and serve all geographies on a single platform.

Azure’s sophisticated security infrastructure will also provide AI-based sentinel services to detect and prevent security breaches. The integration of Power BI and Teams adds a full complement of analytics, dashboarding, reporting, and collaboration capabilities, providing clients with additional means to configure Charles River IMS to meet the unique requirements of their investment processes.

“Our use of Microsoft Azure is a logical next step in Charles River’s evolution as a cloud-based enterprise investment management solution provider,” said John Plansky, CEO of Charles River. “Cloud utilization through Azure will enhance our clients’ experience, enabling them to more easily adopt Charles River IMS’ latest functionality and keep pace against an industry backdrop of heightened market volatility, margin compression, and industry consolidation. Azure also provides the robust infrastructure our global client base requires to address growing regulatory requirements around data residency and movement. Integrating Microsoft Power BI and Teams boosts our collaboration by enabling Charles River IMS to better support clients’ business intelligence needs, as well as their desire to have built-in collaboration capabilities”

Edward Fandrey, Vice President US Financial Services, Microsoft Corp., said, “Charles River’s use of Microsoft Azure will provide institutional asset managers with a scalable, flexible and highly performant platform for managing their investments and servicing their investors. We are proud of our collaboration with Charles River and their choice of Azure, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Teams to better serve their clients.”